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I intentionally avoided, up until now, posting news about Halo 3 - pics notwithstanding - because, frankly, I don\'t care to learn about the levels or the neat gizmos the good Master Chief will be using this time around, ahead of time. They, to me, are spoilers. I am at the point where I just want to play the game for myself and be surprised. I am breaking my rule now because the latest news about Halo 3 steps beyond that broad line of \"developer hype.\" Today Bungie officially confirmed that Halo 3 will feature 4 player Co-op play over Xbox Live and System Link. It\'s that kind of important news that just needs to be boldface.

It didn\'t take long for Turn 10\'s gearheaded staff to release the first of, what I assume will be, many downloadable packs for Forza Motorsport 2. In this pack they bring us four cars. The first three come from Nissan and are free for all: 2007 Sentra SE-R, 2007 Altima, 2007 350Z. The fourth car is the second place winner of this year\'s Le Mans: the Peugeot 908 race car - costing 50 gamerpoints (not bad). The Peugeot is also the first racecar (R4-1 class), as gamers will note, that can be painted.

It you asked us three years ago if console gamers would get a decent real time strategy game in the next-generation, our response would have probably been resounding: \"I wouldn\'t hold your breath.\" We were surprised, fellow readers, not to have only a single decent strategy game come to the Xbox 360, but to have two. Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth has already been critically received, and now Command and Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars gets the royal treatment. If setting Orcs upon a faction of Elves doesn\'t get your heart racing, perhaps setting a herd of mammoth tanks on unsuspecting Nod extremists will.

One of the under-the-radar games this year, THQ\'s Stuntman: Ignition, has us all excited. Whether it\'s the parody of big-budget action films, the balance of risk and reward, or the allure of string-combos, this game seems to have quite a lot to offer gamers. We took the stuntman\'s job for several hours in the Xbox Live demo of Stuntman: Ignition. We ran through burning buildings, shot down helicopters, and braved a hand-brake-less-reverse-one-eighty, and have big, big smiles to show for it. More inside!

Following the events of the film, Shrek the Third puts you in the shoes of Shrek, Donkey, Puss-in-Boots, and others as they try to find Arthur and get him to be king. Taking cues from, and also satiring, the myths of both Arthur and the fairy tale genre, Shrek the Third places you in the middle of a fairy tale coup d\'etat (ask you parents, kids!) in the land of Far Far Away. Although it features many of the same voice actors from the film (including John Cleese), the game suffers from poor execution and vision, even for a kids game. This is one that we swear you\'ll do good to avoid, even if you\'re a fan.

Turn 10 and Microsoft Game Studios bring us the sequel to the critically acclaimed and commecrially successful Forza Motorsport with more cars, updated graphics, and a heftier customization system. Guaranteed to fulfill all your mid-life crises and car tuning fantasies, Forza Motorsport 2 is the next best thing in the world of racing games. And with the price of gas nowadays, what are you waiting for?

While Sandio Technologies promises to revolutionize the way your mouse and game operate together, the learning curve is steep and difficult to overcome. Instead of improving your gaming experience and making you a better player, the 3D Gaming \'O Mouse will instead become an obstacle to overcome, as often as not. While the design works well for RTS camera controls, it falls apart when you move to faster paced titles like First Person Shooters. The inclusion of analog controls on the mouse may very well be a good idea, but not in this iteration, and after some time with the new mouse we simply can\'t recommend it at the $79 price tag.

\"A gift to gamers\" indeed. Microsoft\'s interns and Carbonated Games of Uno fame have made a wonderful shooter that just comes up on the short-lived side of things. Still, this one shouldn\'t be missed, not for being able to play 4 player coop over live or local, not for the sweet boss battles, and not, especially not, for the brevity.

When a student at Clements High School in Texas made a video game mod based on the layout of his local high school, he probably didn\'t expect the reaction it eventually received. Two months after the map was created, the Virginia Tech shootings happened, and authorities took the students map as a threat. Not only was he removed from the campus grounds and sent to an alternative school, he\'s been bared from participating in graduation. Yet no one seems to believe that he actually represented a threat to the community - in that no one seems convinced he was on the verge of picking up a gun and shooting someone. The only problem is that he did something that - some people, at least - connect to events like Virginia Tech. In other words, it didn\'t matter that he wasn\'t really a witch, merely that he looked enough like one to be punished.

There\'s an interesting article written back in 2006 that asks the question, \"Why is Microsoft still in the gaming industry?\" After losing $5.4 billion between 2001 and 2006, what incentive does Microsoft have to stay in the home console market? In fact, Microsoft has no incentive, unless you look at what the entertainment division does for Microsoft as a whole. Microsoft wants to keep control of the living room away from companies like Sony and Apple, and uses the Xbox 360 as a strategic tool for a larger company vision independent of its individual profits or losses. Additionally, there\'s an 800-lb gorilla in the room that keeps getting overlooked: XNA.

Folding@Home is a project that has been undergoing some massive distribution on PCs and now on Sony\'s PS3. It\'s also had success with the program in understanding proteins. A clever use of the human element here, by distributing the program Scientists at Stanford University are trying to get everyone involved in the unravelling of human proteins.

Metal Slug Anthology continues SNK\'s tradition of beating mildly successful franchises to death. This time they package the entirety of the Metal Slug library onto one Wii disc. That\'s seven (count them, Seven!) Metal Slug games for about ten (10!) bucks cheaper than one fully priced game. With updated controls meant specifically for the Wii, what else could you ask for? Is this finally the ultimate Metal Slug package? Find out inside!

Microsoft seems to be trying to play catch-up with the wrong gaming company. Instead of chasing the Nintendo Wii as it storms through the gaming industry, Microsoft is introducing features that bring it closer in line with the PS3. The PS3 has Blu-ray; Xbox 360 gets a HD DVD drive. PS3 has HDMI, and now so does the Xbox 360 Elite. Both systems now have price tags approaching half a grand. Standing in the middle between Nintendo and Sony\'s price tags, Microsoft would be better served introducing a cheaper SKU to compete as a high-end competitor to the Wii, not a low end competitor to the PS3. Yet both Sony and Microsoft seem to be pursuing features that are driven less by consumer demand and more by their own competition for the beefiest console. There\'s a reason that we don\'t need the Xbox 360 Elite; it\'s called the PS3, and not many people are buying that as it is. Why use that as the model for your feature list?

Viva Pinata is one of those games that continues to surface in discussions amongst the GamesFirst staff in a way that is normally reserved for blockbuster titles. Though it certainly is too far outside the realm of \"normal\" to appeal to every gamer, Viva Pinata does an extraordinarily good job of being different and addicting at the same time. Yet its simple gameplay has one issue. Through its use of context sensitive buttons, Viva Pinata managed to take a simple gameplay experience and endow it with the impression that there were too many buttons. Is it possible that what was once a feature that developers bragged about has in some ways managed to simply over-complicate the game?

Microsoft Game Studios\' head Shane Kim sat down with GameDaily and they talked about everything from the Xbox 360\'s performance in 2006 to the negative feedback the PlayStation 3 has been garnering from a majority of the online press. He\'s fairly candid about his feelings in regard to Nintendo and Sony. And although he does a fair share of boosting Microsoft\'s image, he does have some constructive criticism about Microsoft as well. More inside.